So, things have been quiet again for us as we internally investigate and prepare after our previous attempt at anchoring a Citadel. During this time, we are now on our second wardec. It is always amusing to me when our alliance receives a wardec, as our primary area of operation is inside wormhole space. Yes, we have members that do things outside the hole. Some run incursions (though usually on alts), others like to play in low-sec or null-sec from time to time. I've never really understood the logic behind wardec'ing a wormhole corporation. Occasionally we will end up giving a kill to them as they camp the tradehubs or from an inattentive member, but for the most part the wars end without any real interaction. I've usually assumed that we're just being picked from the list of Alliances at random or based on something equally random like killboards.

As I've mentioned before, I do some industry on an alt as a way to make ISK. With the release of Citadels, there has been a move for Citadels near tradehubs to be used in what has been termed "offshoring". Basically, long term buy orders are set up near tradehubs so that their range will reach the tradehub. Items purchased using this buy order are filled at the tradehub but subject only to the broker fee of the Citadel owner, typically 0.1%. It is a great savings from the 2.4% that my character pays from buying directly in a tradehub. Personally, I haven't moved my buying operations to a Citadel yet mostly out of laziness. But I have been watching them. I operate near Amarr and there are currently seven Fortizar Citadels in Domain with three of them being within 2 jumps of Amarr (the closer the better for market operations).

The Syntonex and Big River, LLC Fortizars have been online for a while. What is interesting to me is that their owners have never been wardec'ed in the past month. Syntonex, if you recall, is the corporation that put the first citadel in Perimeter as a test for their operation and defensive capabilities. It is fairly likely that he has negotiated with the various high-sec mercenary corporations to protect his Fortizars. The Big River, LLC Fortizar, however, is a two man corporation with no wars this year. Perhaps they also have made negotiations. I had expected, before the Citadel release, that high-sec citadels would be under constant pressure from casual attacks. After all, most corporations are small with limited PvP experience. A wardec corp, like the ones that routinely wardec our wormhole alliance, would have no problem hitting one during whatever vulnerability timer was set just to see if any response came. If none, they would reinforce it. If someone defended, they would get a fight. Yet here we have a Fortizar run by a two man corporation that hasn't been threatened once since going only.

Now, in the past week or so, a third Fortizar has appeared, in Ashab, the same system as the Syntonex Fortizar. Boom and Gam is, judging by their bio, a 14 person Russian operated Fortizar claiming 0% tax. Guess what.

They are wardec'ed. By the Vendetta Mercenary Group.

This has caught my eye because, as someone who does industry and enjoys pet projects, I have toyed with the idea of putting up a Fortizar of my own (with other EVE friends) both for the savings and as an investment project. It did seem that my prediction of wardec'ed Citadels was incorrect. With the introduction of this third Citadel, however, maybe instead something a bit more interesting is going on. Have the owners of the first Citadels near trade hubs instead negotiated a kind of protection agreement that not only keeps their Citadels safe from wardec but also results in the active removal of competing Citadels?

I'm hoping to see the story behind this and will be watching the killboards to see what happens in Ashab.

I had hoped that this post would be one of celebration following the successful anchoring of an Astrahus in our home wormhole. But, like a large majority of the Astrahus killmails since their introduction, ours suffered an untimely death before it could complete the repair process. What follows is a bit of a post-mortem of the undertaking.

24 hour lockdown

Anchoring a citadel in high-sec is easy. As long as you aren't wardec'ed in the first 15 minutes of putting it into space, your Citadel will build itself for 24 hours, spend 15 minutes repairing from its initial damaged state, and then be ready for use.

Anchoring in low-sec and null-sec is a bit more difficult though it appears that low-sec residents simply aren't attempting to anchor them at all:

Null-sec enjoys larger organizations presumably actively working in the space where they are deploying citadels. While this is also true for wormholes, the size of the corporations wanting to use them is probably, on average, quite a bit smaller. This has resulted in many dead unfit Citadels in wormhole space which were spotted and destroyed by invading fleets looking for content. To give yourself the best chance of success, you must plan to lock down your wormhole for 24 hours while the Citadel anchors so that a fleet does not appear to crush it during the 15 minute repair timer.

This was our plan. Our members showed up in big numbers (for us) and made sure our static connections were closed, that no random wormholes existed, and we set to watching our probe scanners like hawks for the next 24 hours. Everything was great for the first 18 hours or so with people biding their time with mining and movies...

Until...

we caught a new signature. It was noticed quickly and scanned down and when we warped to it, we found it to be the dreaded C008 frigate hole to C5 space. It was the worst case scenario. Frigate holes are exceptionally difficult to close by normal means* and have a short lifespan which provides only about 1 hour of time before you can assume it was connected on the other side even if you haven't jumped through it. We did what we could and formed up some DPS ships with the people that were online, bubbled the connection to prevent as much travel as we could from anyone that would jump through and waited. ​

In the end we had two visitors. One was a random explorer, by the looks of it, who quickly turned and went back through the hole. The second was our undoing. A scout from the wormhole group Exit Strategy came in and also quickly left, but just as quickly returned in an interceptor and scouted out our anchoring citadel. We knew at this point that trouble was coming. Our numbers were not as high as we would have liked and our fleet composition suffered. We made a go of defending the entrance but in the end, they brought a tough fleet of T3TD, frigate logi and jams as well as HICs that easily took care of our few battlecruisers and cruisers without logi support. A couple of us lost pods, but the scout we had in the C5 was able to scan out to high sec via the static C1 and get us back in using interceptors.

As we refit to our remote rep battleship fleet at the POS, the invading fleet left. Now, at this point we already had probably made a number of mistakes including not using our stronger ships from the beginning once we knew a fleet was coming. We also did not bring logistics or EWAR to the fight to tip it in our favor due to numbers. Our lack of strong pvp experience was showing but we were ready to make a stand at the Citadel. A call was made to roll our static C3 knowing that we had enemy scouts in the system. With that done, we watched for more scanning and never saw probes even though the enemy brought another Astero through the frigate hole. Another fatal mistake was assuming that scanning was not occurring when we didn't spot probes. This was roughly 1 hour before the Citadel was to come online. We were also phased by the killboard showing our enemies losing a large fleet in low-sec, quite probably on their way to us. We falsely assumed here that this might delay or disinterest them entirely.

In the end, a strong cruiser fleet that outnumbered us 2 or 3 to one came in through our static with logi, links, and lots of DPS with only 2.5 minutes left on our Citadel repair timer. Just in time to kill our defenses and then the Citadel.

You know what they say about assumptions...

We screwed up. More specifically, I screwed up as the CEO. I didn't make the call to exercise extreme hole control but instead made the assumption that our enemy had either retreated or lost interest. I should have known better. They would not retreat from having thoroughly trounced us and EVE is not full of players who give up on content. All we needed, in the end, was 2.5 minutes of delay to the fleet coming for us and we would have a Citadel in our system. I'll kick myself for that for a long while...

What's good is that as a group, as we always will, we were able to use this experience as a lesson with many learning opportunities. Some of our members went so far as to exchange some EVE mails with our opponents to get their perspective. A friendly exchange in local during the destruction showed what I have always loved about our corporation and is embodied in the tag applied to us by previous members : "Not good at much but at least they fucking try".

Try again we will. It is no secret that Citadels are a massive quality of life improvement for wormhole corporations and most, if not all, will be wanting one in their system. Of course, eventually, we all will have no other choice. So for now, we are reorganizing our strategy and planning for another attempt hopefully with better results.

Roughly two and half hours ago at the time of this writing, what appears to be the first Medium Citadel hit the Jita market. As you can see, it was priced well above the actual component value and even 50% more than the BPO cost. It quickly disappeared from the market in less than 30 minutes, presumably sold. Here are some quick facts

The fastest a Medium Citadel could be built at was 44 hours using the Upwell awarded prize of a fully researched BPC. This could have been completed just before downtime yesterday and possibly could be anchoring in New Eden right now to be finished just before downtime today.

More reasonably, a normal BPO could be created in as little as 55 hours which was right about the time that the Astrahus appeared on the Jita market. It would have involved risking building it in a low-sec or null-sec POS with a rapid equipment assembly array and then transporting the completed citadel to market.

For the less risky industrialist, we should see station build Astrahus appearing on the Jita market after about 85 hours which would be about this time tomorrow.

The real question is, will the first Astrahus die in a fire defending itself from attackers or will it die a cold death in the cargo bay of some unfortunate space trucker?

I feel like our corporation has been resting in hibernation waiting for this release. It is no secret that Citadels are widely viewed as a significant upgrade and improvement for wormhole space. No more will we have to deal with public access Ship Maintenance Arrays at risk from theft, goofy POS and division security systems to protect members from each other, and limited personal storage. Citadels provide not only a first-class inventory system straight from NPC stations, but also a whole new set of offensive capabilities including fighter squadrons and for the large structures, area of effect and doomsday weapons. We have been waiting patiently for this release for over a year now. The security provided by the hangers alone will drastically change the paranoia level of wormhole recruitment. While you still will be concerned with members and their potential to cause trouble from the inside, situations like the recent trouble with NOVAC having their towers taken offline and SMAs ejected will be a thing of the past short of someone with Director access unanchoring a Citadel but even that is a week long process, not something instantaneous.

But for all the benefits that we have been waiting for, including clone swapping in wormhole space, life in C5 and C6 space will never be the same. With capital ship changes, escalation site changes, and the inevitable requirement for a Large Citadel to store capital ships, high-class wormhole space is just now entering their own countdown. In a post-POS, post-Citadel EVE, the minimum investment to live in high-class space (other than using dedicated cap sitters) is a Large Citadel if you want to have capital ships. At an estimated price of 10 billion ISK, it may be a small portion of the ISK needed when you consider the cost of the fleets used, but it is a significant jump from a large POS even fully fitted with defenses and hangers. While our corporation chose C4 space specifically because of the limitations preventing capital use, our focus is being refined with the Citadel release to one of Exploration and Combat by encouraging our scouts to dive into the chain, look for targets (and exploration sites for themselves) but limiting site running PvE to "bear holes" keeping the home system free from PvE. This is not unusual for many wormhole corps, though it is a shift in direction for us as traditionally we have been more relaxed with our pilot activites. While I believe that PvP and PvE focused members will always be in direct conflict, this pending post-POS EVE on the horizon has significant implications for the viability of small bear holes operated by alts. Not only have the capital escalation mechanics changed to curtail just this kind of operation, but now the storage of caps carries a significantly higher price tag to deploy.

Meanwhile, a similar countdown will be ticking away in low-class space. It is not that uncommon to find low-class holes, even down to C2 space with capital ships. Those residents looking to keep their capitals need to start planning for a Large Citadel. Having a Large Citadel in low-class space will scream capitals potentially making it a more desirable target. Citadels will always drop loot in wormhole space and trashing of ships is disabled once the Citadel is reinforced. I have never been one to underestimate the ingenuity or tenacity of wormhole residents and I would expect that we will see the birth of a new kind of squad that hunts and destroys these types of structures...despite those that believe that Large structures in low-class space are near unassailable much like XL in high-class.

This may be the most impactful change to wormhole space in the three years I have been playing EVE. I am very excited for what it will undoubtedly do to re-energize our corporation and the rest of wormhole space.

On a side note, our Alliance has started a new corporation in null-sec looking to build NRDS in Vale. If you are interested in joining on this new adventure, apply to Silent Reckoning. [SLNTR] in game.

First, if you are interested in Citadels and aren't hanging out in the #structures channel on the Tweetfleet Slack, you are doing yourself a disservice. CCP Nullarbor is in attendance there frequently asking and answering questions and has provided a wealth of feedback and information about this important upcoming feature. His community involvement really should be held up as a model for other CCP features. One interesting nugget that has come out of those discussions is related to how Citadels interact with other markets.

As is evident by posts such as the recent one from Gevlon, there is definitely a perception that sometime after Citadels are released, there will be a player effort to create a kind of alternative trade hub in high-sec. Any player group that is able to create, hold, and convince others to use their hub would begin reaping the benefit of the sales tax and broker fees. Those fees are a magnitude larger than most other income sources in EVE and thus have people reeling from their possible impact on the game.

But there's a "secret" when it comes to Citadels and it is two-fold:

First, and probably the most well known, is that Citadels will not have contracts on their initial release. This has come up in forum comments, the #structures channel, on reddit, and in other sources where details of the Citadels are being fleshed out. Citadels will be getting contracts in the near future, just not on the initial release. Contracts are a big part of any trade hub's operation and their absence will curtail all but the most dedicated traders from creating a truly large hub.

Second, and the lesser known, is that Citadels have limitations around ranged orders. If you are a miner, for example, and want to sell your product at the local Citadel because it is conveniently located, when you dock, you will not be able to sell to any buy order that does not originate in the Citadel. This is because the market system cannot account for a remote buyer's access to this Citadel to pick up your goods. Ranged buy orders from other Citadels or NPC stations will not show up as "green" in the market window when docked. While this presents an opportunity for Citadel owners or savvy buyers to set up orders in public Citadels, the initial reaction might be one of confusion from sellers looking to unload their materials. The reverse is also true. If you set up a Citadel with the hopes that you can use it to base your regional orders from and save on tax and fees, you can, as long as those orders are filled at NPC stations. Players docked in other Citadels and goods to sell cannot sell to you. They either have to move the materials to an NPC station to reach your order or, more likely, you will be cut off by a buy order created in the Citadel. Buyers are likely to need significantly more orders to manage all the public Citadels or miss out on those materials. This is not a bad set of features, per se. I believe, however, that it differs wildly from what the perceptions of the market feature is.

The truth about Citadels is that they are intended to be corporation and alliance markets. You will be able to open your Citadel for docking and for service use. You will collect fees from those players who choose to add to your corporation and alliance market or even their use of your reprocessing facilities. What you won't have is a true NPC station replacement that interacts with the "real" EVE market in the same way. You will be able to sell your own local wares fine but you will not be participating in the larger regional market when it comes to buying materials at range from other Citadels or in selling your materials to other buyers.

​I believe that the lack of contracts on release will certainly delay any chance of a true market hub Citadel from appearing at first but it will be the idiosyncrasies of ranged orders that may, in the end, be enough of a problem where the true material sourcers will simply avoid Citadels in favor of NPC stations and where materials are sourced, so too the buyers will flock, at least in high-sec where public markets rule. The benefits for null-sec and wormhole corporations in running their own corporate markets are massive and there the adoption will likely be significantly higher.

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